Sci-Hub Faces $4.8 Million Piracy Damages and ISP Blocking (torrentfreak.com)

The American Chemical Society (ACS), a leading source of academic publications in the field of chemistry, accused Sci-Hub of mass copyright infringement and is demanding $4.8 million in piracy damages. "Sci-Hub was made aware of the legal proceedings but did not appear in court," reports Torrent Freak. "As a result, a default was entered against the site, and a few days ago ACS specified its demands, which include $4.8 million in piracy damages." The complaint comes soon after the pirate site was ordered to pay $15 million in piracy damages to academic publisher Elsevier. From the report: "Here, ACS seeks a judgment against Sci-Hub in the amount of $4,800,000 -- which is based on infringement of a representative sample of publications containing the ACS Copyrighted Works multiplied by the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 for each publication," they write. "Sci-Hub's unabashed flouting of U.S. Copyright laws merits a strong deterrent. This Court has awarded a copyright holder maximum statutory damages where the defendant's actions were "clearly willful' and maximum damages were necessary to 'deter similar actors in the future.'" The publisher notes that the maximum statutory damages are only requested for 32 of its 9,000 registered works. This still adds up to a significant sum of money, of course, but that is needed as a deterrent, ACS claims.

Although the deterrent effect may sound plausible in most cases, another $4.8 million in debt is unlikely to worry Sci-Hub's owner, as she can't pay it off anyway. However, there's also a broad injunction on the table that may be more of a concern. The requested injunction prohibits Sci-Hub's owner to continue her work on the site. In addition, it also bars a wide range of other service providers from assisting others to access it. Specifically, it restrains "any Internet search engines, web hosting and Internet service providers, domain name registrars, and domain name registries, to cease facilitating access to any or all domain names and websites through which Defendant Sci-Hub engages in unlawful access to [ACS's works]."

Comments

great post PZ, except it is all a lie

[Texmaize]

As part of the scientific community who has published many articles, I can affirm that the above poster is exaggerating at best. Since the age of the word processor, the author does the lions share of the type setting. In fact, I have had articles sent back for revision if the type setting was wrong. So, I am not sure what all these high paid graphics artists are doing.

Now, I have also reviewed hundreds of articles. I guess I really did not get the memo, because I was not paid for a single one. Maybe in the above posters magical journal, they pay reviews, but in my experience it is a service that one has to do gratis, if they want grant money from a federal agency. If I am wrong, i am happy to send a bill

As for the rest of the arguments, all I can say is that circles are circular because they are circles. If one creates a system with an arbitrary number of cost centers at an arbitrary cost, then they can get an arbitrary value for their production fee. For example, many journals are located in DC or New York. While I am sure this is a lot of fun for the editor, it is not necessary. I am pretty sure in a world of interconnected supply chains, one could base in somewhere cheap like West Virginia, pay negligible rent and pay the editor less since it is a cheap place to live. Suddenly, the costs go down.

BTW, the editor's main job is to find reviewers and to see if the article fits the scope of the journal. Despite the title, there is very little editing of typos etc going on from that position. Some journals also have people do this gratis, for the ability to have a better chance to get grants, of course.

To put this in further perspective, the poster claims over $2000 per article. Using an example I know well, the journal of physical chemistry has about 30-40 articles per issue. So, this means each issue is costing 60-80K dollars. In comparison, a comic book has a break even point of about $20,000/issue. These are in full color, based in New York, and they have to pay all their artists and authors. Since a comic book costs about 3 dollars, this means they are doing this for less than the poster's journal, who gets all their material for free. Something doesn't add up.

Did I mention that the authors of the article have to pay to be published? Just saying...